Re: Monster switch for small size (was Linux-tiny revival)

[Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>]

On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:41:22 -0500 Rob Landley wrote:

> On Thursday 20 September 2007 12:10:50 pm Tim Bird wrote:
> > Andy Whitcroft wrote:
> > > Knowing nothing about these options, from a test perspective it would
> > > be nice if we were able to simply enable "the lot" so we can do "normal"
> > > -mm runs and "tiny" -mm runs without any manual intervention?
> >
> > I agree completely.
> >
> > I have been thinking for a while about how to make a "monster switch"
> > (the kind they always seem to have in Frankenstein movies) that
> > switches a whole bunch of settings at once.  We currently have methods
> > in the kernel for:
> >  * default (or recommended) config for a particular platform
> >  * all yes - to build as much as possible
> >  * all no - to build as little as possible
> >
> > The problem with "allno" is that it rarely produces a usable
> > kernel.
> 
> Beyond that, allno doesn't come close to switching everything off.
> 
> 1) You have to _enable_ CONFIG_EMBEDDED in order to go into that menu and 
> switch _off_ the stuff in there.
> 
> 2) The stuff CONFIG_EMBEDDED reveals isn't all in that menu.  CONFIG_BLOCK is 
> at the top level menu.  CONFIG_VT and CONFIG_UNIX98_PTYS are buried down 
> under device drivers->character devices, and there's more sprinkled all over.  
> You have to track it all down and switch it off to get an _actual_ 
> allnoconfig kernel.
> 
> (I cut the bit where you reinvent miniconfig.  People keep doing this.  I dig 

I noticed that too.

> it up and resubmit it every year or so, so Roman Zippel can shoot it down 
> again.  Meanwhile, not only is Firmware Linux happily using it, but I even 
> wrote more documentation at 
> http://landley.net/code/firmware/new_platform.html although you have to 
> scroll down a bit to get to the stuff about miniconfig...)

I use it for daily build/boot/run-some-number-like-30-tests kernel testing.

---
~Randy
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